He just sought sex. He sought stupid sex. He sought risky sex. He sought anonymous sex.

To term what he was looking for as “gay sex” is to further denigrate the homosexual community and foster an unfair stereotype by lumping all their intimate encounters in with the lurid dealings that are found in rest areas, adult video stores, public bathrooms and anonymous meetings arranged online.

Even our own U.S. Rep. Barney Frank, one of only two openly gay members of Congress, mislabeled Craig’s actions as he decried the conservative Republican’s public stances conflicting with his private actions.

“This is the hypocrisy - it’s to deny legal equality to gay people, but then to engage in gay behavior,” Frank told the Associated Press.

Craig’s actions were indeed hypocritical but they were no more an accurate description of “gay behavior” than if the same actions involving women would rightly be termed normal “heterosexual behavior.” People with healthy views of physical intimacy, gay or straight, do not engage in sex with strangers in public bathrooms or find their dates from phone numbers on the walls.

Monogamous same-sex partners as well as other sexually healthy and active single gays and lesbians are smeared when the term “gay behavior” is used in relation to people such as Craig and disgraced former U.S. Rep. Mark Foley of Florida, who stepped down after it was revealed he sent sexually charged emails to underage congressional pages.

Homosexuality was once referred to as “the love that dare not speak its name.” It is because of imagery like this that its taken centuries for gays and lesbians to make even slight gains in acceptance.

We perpetuate the unjust image of gays when we apply subterranean sexual prowling or pedophilic solicitation to normal homosexual relations. They are not the same.

It would be akin to labeling all married heterosexuals deviant and perfidious because of the actions of people such as former President Bill Clinton with a former White House aide and Sen. David Vitter of Louisiana, who allegedly regularly solicited prostitutes despite being married.

Craig’s solicitations of an undercover cop in Minnesota ñ he pleaded guilty but has since recanted ñ are in conflict with his championing of family values. That is where the hypocrisy lies. He was a married man seeking sexual gratification outside his vows of fidelity.

Perhaps in his mind, physical relationships between all consenting same-sex adults occurs in bathrooms and backseats with partners whose names may be known or not.